Report: Stormfront In Discussions To Keep Studio Alive

Following Gamasutra's earlier report that Bay Area-based developer Stormfront Studios (The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers) was closing, studio head Don Daglow has said new discussions could keep the developer alive, but that Stormfront has still suspended operations. Gamasutra learned of the closure on April 1st from sources close to the studio, but in a new report from consumer site GameCyte, Daglow has said "the best way to put it is to say that we’ve suspended operations." "New discussions have actually started," he continued, but added that with no certainty that the deals would come through, "We’ve sent virtually everybody home." While Daglow said the studio has seen situations like this before in its nearly two decades of operations, "What happened this time was we added the extra element of not only having lost a project to the acquisitions with the publishers, not only having things come at a time when we were between projects, not only having invested in two original IPs that we were close to signing but hadn’t signed, and then you add the final phase of the perfect storm: What’s happened to the economy and the stock market." The company most recently finished development on its adaptation of children's property The Spiderwick Chronicles with publisher Sierra, first announced last year, for Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and PC.